Yep: I've been using Thinkpads for over 15 years, over HP, Dell, or other brands, specifically for the TrackPoint. I'm using it as I type this. When I use my work Macbook Pro, I really do miss it.
When I'm working from home I use the Macbook as it has the VPN software to get to the work, and it has my local Linux VM. For non-work stuff I use my Thinkpad, which has a different Linux VM for my personal projects, including various 8 and 16 bit tools and emulators. Same fvwm config and X environment everywhere.

I use a variant of emacs (XEmacs) for everything I do, and that's either under Linux or Unix. GNU Make handles my builds. It can be used for building documentation (which I write in LaTeX) and just about everything else.

Visual Studio Code (VSC) for me too. And I use GIT for source control. VSC has good support for GIT and you can install GITLens for even better support.

And I use keyboard shortcuts for common operations. VSC has a command line as well which is useful. Just hit F1 and it brings up a command line with completion.

You can find a lot of 6502 support included. I've been using KickAssembler right from inside of VSC for example.

As an aside I also do all Arduino based stuff there as well as it is much better than the stock IDE and you can program the device and get serial feedback without leaving VSC. It has full support for hunting through code (finding all references etc) and is pretty snappy even on my 10 year old PC.